Airbnbust? Short-term rental prices plummet in Palm Springs
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This backs up anecdotes I’ve been hearing about people going back from AirBnB to hotels. The consensus seems to be that the price difference is diminished and the high variance in quality is not worth whatever discount still exists.
I have some good memories from the early years of talking with hosts and even having them show me around, it’s a shame that it’s become so transactional but I don’t see how it could have scaled any other way.
Booked the room with a King bed, ender up in the 2nd room with a small futon. Took pictures and the host was a ghost over messaging till after we had left, when he left us a negative review. AirBnB was useless when I called their support line that night, meanwhile the host left a negative review and AirBnB was unwilling to remove it despite the host leaving the platform a few months later.
You didn't get what you paid for, snd they ghosted you instead of taking care of it.
The best deals and service is Vacasa though in my experience. The actual properties may not be that great but the descriptions are accurate and they all have a full 3d / 360 walkthrough thing. And if you have a problem or need something it's more like a hotel you can text 24/7 and someone is on call that will show up or answer your questions.
Isn't the reason Airbnb bookings are down because interest rates are sky-high worldwide to combat inflation? Travel, in general, should be down if the reserved banks worldwide are doing their job.
Toilet brush, I mean, they have people who will clean the toilet daily. Not a perfect substitute I agree, but also not something I've ever really thought about.
[edited to add] > Isn't the reason Airbnb bookings are down because interest rates are sky-high worldwide to combat inflation? Travel, in general, should be down if the reserved banks worldwide are doing their job.
Other way around. Prices are high because a lot of people are traveling, which is being folded into inflation numbers. Prices are high because demand is high relative to supply, for lots of things, but especially for travel where the market is still riding the post-pandemic rebound.
You are right that reserve banks are hoping to reduce demand for things like travel, but that will yield lower prices. Consensus is that rates at current levels are not doing that yet, and I think in past recessions, layoffs led demand drops.
Note also that Airbnb bookings are down but hotel occupancy is right below its 2019 peak. [1]
[1] https://www.ahla.com/sites/default/files/SOTI_report_Oxford_...
Toilet brush? Maybe I'm a weirdo, but if I see a problem with the toilet, or any other part of the room, I go down to the front desk and smile a nice smile and say, "hey, can you send someone up to sort this out?", and then they do -- for free. I also get infinite towels, a pool (often), a gym (sometimes), access to people who are familiar with the area, no hinky cleaning fees or other surprises on my bill, points and rewards, and a reasonable certainty that there are no hidden cameras in my room and anybody I have to deal with is sane enough most days to keep a job in hospitality.
Aside from people who are traveling in groups of three or more or just have a desire to set some money on fire, I don't understand why people use AirBnBs.
If it’s just me or just me and the family, we’ll typically just get a hotel for all the reasons you mentioned. Less hassle about cleaning, points and such, no dealing with wacky policies from an over zealous host telling you how to use the A/C unit or something like that.
As far as the toilet brush, I think that maybe more a region or cultural thing, but I’m only kind of guessing. I saw a Reddit thread asking Americans why there aren’t toilet brushes in public restrooms (I believe the OP was Spanish) and they said it’s common courtesy to scrub away anything that may not have been flushed away. Again, only a guess.
[1] https://newyork.forumdaily.com/en/pochemu-amerikancy-ne-polz...
I once had a checkout list that was 40 items long or so, and for each item, it was a $25 fee if I didn't do the requested task.
This on top of a $200 cleaning fee (for a small 1 bedroom cabin).
I complained to AirBNB, nothing happened.
Have also had hosts cancel on me the DAY OF my stay, after I already arrived at my destination with no other place to stay, and very limited options.
Will not stay in an AirBNB unless it's an absolute last resort. And I'll usually just avoid the area if AirBNB is the only option.
As a solo traveler? NFW
That being said I still check AirBnB because sometimes there are great deals there. Also the longer term I'm booking, the more I'm going to prefer an AirBnB-type apartment or house accommodation - though AirBnB will likely be at least 2-4x more expensive than booking the same place through local sources - though the latter will probably require a minimum stay of at least 1-3 months (which still can end up cheaper than AirBnB for short-term stays).
This is an example of how different people can be. To me, the ideal experience is to never see or hear the property owner. I just want a nice place to stay that’s not just a door, a bed and a bathroom. I grant that AirBnB can be a bit of a crapshoot, but our experiences have been largely very positive.
As we've seen over the last 1-2 years most places in the developed world are now entering or are in the midst of a full-blown housing crisis. The average house price in Toronto is north of C$1.1M for a country with notoriously low incomes, as one example. And that's before we even get to Vancouver.
There are lots of reasons for this including a drop in new home starts (which have never recovered to their 2007 levels in the US), effective NIMBYism at every policy level and corporations moving into residential real estate.
But the real problem here is that we treat housing, a basic human necessity, as a commodity--something to be bought and sold en masse and to be withheld from people so they die in the streets in the interests of profits. AirBnB is just once facet of this. Many view second or third or fourth homes as income sources and retirement accounts. Governments have become so beholden to these voters that most Wdeveloped governments see increasing house prices as an explicit policy goal and all sorts of money is thrown at homeowners.
This has to stop.
If we stop treating housing as a commodity that must go up in value you’ll find that the supply increases.
AirBnB was great ~5 years ago. If they just restricted it to people renting out their kid's room after they left for college, it would be perfect.
But instead it’s used to create illegal hotels residential areas and as investments that further restrict rental housing supply.
I have a “living experience” in a country that was treating housing not as a commodity, but as a basic human necessity. You know what - it was much, much harder to get a decent housing there than in the US. Surprise?
I mean I get your point but don’t see a sane way out. Maybe we should just build way more?
Also, with most consumers feeling a squeeze from prices, higher interest rates, etc. it's expected that these sky high prices have to come down.
It doesn't make sense to me either, but tourists still come here in the summer.
Even that well-known search & rescue story of the "Death Valley Germans" dated their van rental from July [0]:
> The vehicle, owned by Dollar Rent a Car, had been rented to a group of four German tourists in Los Angeles on July 8, 1996.
> The vehicle had been due back to the rental agency in Los Angeles on July 26, but had never been returned.
Edit: if you didn't know this story, I'm so sorry about your next N unproductive hours.
You know the weather and climate are fucked when it's hotter than Kuwait City.
Whenever I hear of people still using AirBNB it is always a version of “need of a kitchen” or “need space for multiple families”. I feel like both of these are simply features that a hotel chain could expand into more aggressively.
AirBNB, like many tech companies of its era, has failed to consider the goodwill and loyalty of its customers as a KPI and instead alienated its users. The lack of loyalty means any sizeable hotel chain can win customers quite easily by simply providing the product-market fit that I described above.
The takeaway is that the market CHANGES, which means anyone in the Airbnb business needs to have the same values as any business. It's not easy money for the wealthy, to solely buy a property and let it crank out cash. There was a quote in the article that reflects this "easy money" mentality.
>The tax receipts since then, however, have not supported that optimistic outlook: May revenues were down by about 18% from May 2022
Those are not anecdotes, and appear very early on in the article.
Why do people fall for Silicon Valley polished turds? Does feces really smell better when VC funding is involved?
So since the start of airbnb they have practically reduced the number of homes by 20%? And all to add the capacity of probably the equivalent of 5-10 large hotels?
Based on personal experience, I would tend to give more credence to this line than to other speculation about AirBnB or the short-term rental industry.
I know that the AirBnBs I've tried to book recently have all been both expensive and booked up. I also know that when I was shopping for a home last summer, 4 out of 5 Redfin agents pointed out which parts of the property could be potentially be converted into rental units. That made me think at the time that there is or would soon be a lot of "inventory" on the rental market.
That said, the prices on Airbnb are cheap: $40-110/night for downtown prime locations. During SXSW last year, comparables to my place went for $900-1300/night.